


the brave may live forever

by Gabri



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: /in a way, Character Death, Disfigurement, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Frostcup - Freeform, Gore, Hijack, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Scars, Survivor Guilt, a whole lot of it set before the story starts, negative self image, post mortem au, talk of body shame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's seen the wounded ones, the corpse-like survivors, the sick and the frostbitten and the burned. They were on a freakish pedestal amongst the young and the pretty. They were flinched at, whispered about. They learned to hang their heads and cover their faces. He hadn't thought himself so ugly, at first, but forever is a long time to think and Jack had forever all for himself.</p><p>And as it turns out, so did Hiccup.</p><p>(aka the post mortem au. Temporary hiatus~)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post mortem AU is simply: Hiccup and Toothless die in the Red Death explosion and remain as spirits, similar to Jack. Both Hiccup and Jack retain the their death wounds. Check the post mortem au tag on tumblr if you'd like to cheat for extra details/updates. There's also art! :) :)
> 
> as always, read the triggers, especially for character death. It's all pre-story but there's a lot of it.

Jack's watched generations of children grow up. He's seen how their eyes start out wide and trusting, unable to comprehend anything larger than what was directly in front of them, and then how quickly they grasp the concepts of space, time, opportunity. He's watched those who have realized their dreams and those who have failed. It's all the same, in a way - the struggle of trying to expand into a space so much bigger than themselves. Jack's been there before, too. He knows how progress can feel.

But what's really strange is looking back and discovering how much smaller his world used to be. Remembering, now that he's been granted the privilege, what it was like to sit on the back steps with Emma curled against his arm, knowing the Earth from chalky sketches and late stories but never seeing the way the ocean folded into itself like a lullaby, or the dusty expanse of an open desert or the feeling of heat curling into his cold bones like a unwelcome stranger. 

He knows that even then when his hair was dark and his skin was rosy pink, that Sandy was coiling ribbons of dreamsand above his sister's head as Jack talked her gently to sleep, and that the way his mother used to sigh when she talked about their father may have been Cupid all along. He knows that Pitch Black has lived in the center of the Earth since before the Earth even earned it's name. Mostly, he knows the size of this planet, from having traveled it hundreds of years over. There are still many secrets, too many to count, hidden passageways and mazes and holes that only open when the right word was whispered. It's all part of the fun, he used to think. An endless well of discovery.

He wishes it didn't chill him so much, now. Because the center of the Earth is equidistant from anywhere, everywhere, and surely there was not just one rotted bed with just one sunken tunnel and surely, _surely_ , there were places where Pitch could whisper through and curl his long, black nails tight around a child's ankle and pull.

He remembers standing in the snow with his heart lodged in his throat while the Nightmare King's palm seared heat into the small of his back, whispering, _how positively frightening you are_ as if it were the richest of compliments and not the most vile truth imaginable.

He tells himself that Pitch was wrong in the end, because the children love him just as he dreamed the would, because even the ones who were startled at first put that behind them, and that those flinches and gasps were nothing compared with the end result of flurries and joy.

Toothiana joked once, _remember, 'blood and gums?' We all have our bad moments._

So again and again Jack pictures North with his blood-rusted swords, the way Sophie had broken into tears when she first heard Bunnymund's war cry, and he thinks, _yeah, yeah, you're right._

He tells himself that it didn't hurt that first time, when Jamie flinched back at the sight of his face.

\----

He didn't think it was so terrible, in the beginning. He was too caught up in the wind, the comforting beat of lily white moon rays. He was too caught up in the little shock of pain that thrummed through between his ribs and squeezed around his lungs when the ghosts of the living passed through him. 

Sometimes he caught glimpses of different spirits - the shy sort, little imps with black eyes and thoughtful smiles. He's seen merpeople lounging on rocks by Sandy's castle, seaweed green and slitted around their cheeks like salmon. They flapped back into the water when he got too close, but one bared its teeth at him in warning and he saw the razor points of bone like that of a great shark. So he knows; he's not the only one who can deliver a shock.

Jack's skin is cracked in places, blue-gray like a corpse and spider-webbed with frost. The tips of his ears and nose are rotted black. He doesn't get to see it often - his reflection in the ice is usually the most of it, just bright blue eyes blinking happily through a sheet of glass. His teeth, on the other hand, were lovely, perfectly straight and very, very white. It was what Toothiana had noticed first about him, when they met - not his purple-blue lips or the skeletal hollow of his cheeks or the sunken shade his eye sockets had taken, but his teeth.

"-beautiful, they're beautiful, so clean." she had swooned.

So Jack hadn't thought himself so horrid.

But three hundred years was a long time to wander. He's seen children and adults alike pass on. He's seen the wounded ones, the corpse-like survivors, the sick and the frostbitten and the burned. They were on a freakish pedestal amongst the young and the pretty. They were flinched at, whispered about. They learned to hang their heads and cover their faces.

He's wondered 'why won't they see me?' aloud under the light of the Man in the Moon for ages, for as far back as he's ever been a wisp upon the earth. He's asked it again and again, hollow, lonely, both sitting in the dark and out in the open daylight, staring at the sky for answers.

_"Why won't they see me?"_

And then, some hundred years later, as the small doubts turned to fears and the nervousness became terror, even Pitch Black must have been able to feel the way his heart stopped and his stomach turned when at last he began to ask, _but what would happen then, if they did?_

\---

Jamie is nineteen when rumors of Fearlings begin to bubble up again. Without really meaning to, Jack's been keeping count of time by the change in Jamie's growing face - the roundness of his cheeks growing sharp, the narrow look of confidence that comes gradually to his eyes. Toothiana's finished her work on him since; his smile has grown back in again, straight and sharp and new. His belief has stayed strong, a flare light for Jack to cling to as his numbers gradually increase. He and a few friends (including a pretty red-head that Jamie's been stammering around quite a lot lately) are playing in the parking lot of a frozen-up campus when Baby Tooth streaks in to fetch him.

More accurately, Jamie and Jack play as a team, and the rest all shriek and duck from snowballs and hide behind snow-packed walls in blissful ignorance. There aren't as many believers at this age, but they don't need to know where a stray snowball or two is being thrown from, and Jamie takes delight in the way Jack makes their school-stressed faces go pink and giddy in the cold.

He has to cut the game short to follow Baby Tooth back to North's, their most common meeting ground, where a fae Jack has never seen before is sitting in the shadows, speaking in a hushed, throaty whisper to Sandy. She's a golden-skin woman with a gritty texture about her, not quite like dreamsand but more natural, rough and worn and regal. Heavy bronze jewelry lays thick about her, in bracelets and necklaces and blocky earrings. What Jack notices first, however, is her face -- this woman has the head of sphinx, with enormous teal eyes lined in dark kohl. It's shocking, and in it's exotic strangeness, very beautiful. 

Jack keeps his distance at North's insistence. She's a shy thing, the sphinx woman, though her gaze is hypnotic and despite their assurances he wants to get closer and try his hand at a few riddles. But there are more important things to discuss, and the Guardians sans North and Jack get a good grasp of information from her before she's off in a flash, back to the sands where Jack assumes she'll stay hidden again at her preference.

"Just few Fearlings spotted." says Toothiana nervously once they've regrouped again. "A few more holes."

"One or two." Bunnymund corrects. "'A set of bad eyes', that's what she said. It's minor, yeah? We knew this would happen."

Nods all around. Sandy conjures up the image of slippery shadow figures, albeit dripping gold in his dreamsand version, dragging their feet pathetically like a tangle of tired sloths.

"Weak." North translates with booming good cheer. "Few in numbers, and weak. Poor Pitch, he is tired."

They allow themselves a bit of smugness.

"So there's a tunnel in the Riddler's tomb, in Egypt. As far as she can tell, empty." Toothiana ticks the locations off her nimble fingers, speaking fast. "Another one reported by the beach north of Easter Island. Covered in vines. Bunny is keeping an eye on it - thank you, Bunny! And the opening by the lake is showing signs of wear again. Jack, especially, you need to be careful. It's close!"

"I'm careful." Jack says, because it's true and because out of all of their targets, that's the one that worries him the most. It's the hole that Pitch had disappeared into all those years back. Time and weather has washed over the lines where his nails dug into the earth, but Jack can still see them in his minds eye: crooked, desperate gullies into the dust, marks of impending revenge.

"Is nothing to fear," North says warmly. "We are here, and we are strong."

"And the bloody Boogieman knows better than to mess with us." Bunnymund snorted. "Be a right fool too, after."

After.

But following the Sphinx's warning, Jack visits the place where Pitch's broken bed used to sit. There's no sign of him there, no bits of splintered wood, no ooze of darkness saturated within the air like a sickness. No yellow Fearling eyes. There is only a distinct lack of green life and, as Toothiana had said, signs of wear. The earth dipped in and caved, dark spaces showing through here and there, as if a hollow pit underneath were slowly making itself known. Jack searches every inch of the place, but there is no sign of forced entry or rogue power pushing from the inside out. Just a natural decline, a slope of Earth, and a slight chill from underneath.

Jack visits every week between snowfights and summer sleeps, watching the dust dissolve and the earth settle and the hole open wider and wider.

\----

He loses a believer the hard way about the time that Jamie turns twenty one. It's the age of hand-me-down station wagons and second dates, and although the open affection on his face never wavers, Jack isn't the only person he shows it toward. The redhead - Samantha is her name - swallows up Jamie's time minute by minute until Jack has to change tactics, forming icicles and chilling noses while Jamie holds her mittened hand instead of pelting snowballs hard at the back of their heads for fun. He still gets his chances, but Jamie's joy seems to stem stronger from rolling about heaps of snow to build a snowman with his girlfriend now. Jack leans against it crookedly later, when it's all finished and the couple have left. They sketched their initials in back with a stick; "J.B. & S.M" surrounded by a loopy cursive heart. Jamie had surrounded it with feathery snowflake lines, a nod to Jack's help. Samantha doesn't know that, but then again, Samantha's never seen him. He wonders if she'd be frightened, if she ever had.

He probably wouldn't be dwelling so much on it, if it wasn't within the same month that one of his lights had snuffed out. That child was six, small and blonde with a gap-toothed smile that made hearts melt. He caught his first glimpse of Jack and shrieked in fear, diving back inside from the cold and into his mothers arms. Jack had seen him sobbing for nearly an hour from the other side of a frosted windowpane, listening to the cooing sounds his mother calmed him with as she stroked her hands sweetly through his hair. 

"Saw a ghost," he had cried, burrowing into her embrace.

"Just a neighbor," his mother soothes sympathetically.

"A _d-dead_ ghost!"

"Just a bad dream, honey."

Jack wants to be sick. He wants to curl up and disappear. Without even making the conscious choice to go, he finds himself back under the lake, folded up in the dark, moonlit place where he remembers being reborn. The ice feels thickest there, foggy and sleepy and comforting, like crawling back into the safety of nature's womb. But his chest is tight, as if tiny Fearling fingers have pushed past the frostbitten skin and curled around his heart, squeezing greedily.

In his mind he's in Antarctica, and Pitch's eyes are lit like fool's gold, an inky smear of blackness on the white terrain. "Such a pretty little Nightmare," he says, as if he's talking to one of the Fearlings, but his eyes are on Jack and they're bright and they're hungry.

"I'm not like you," Jack tells him, again and again in his brain. "And even if I was, I don't want what you want."

"Are you so drunk on the ecstasy of your supposed _fun_ that you cannot see your natural talent for fear?" Pitch's hands are cool and empty, like stone. Against his skin, it's like river water, eroding. "The things you could make them _feel?_ Your precious children. What you can do - what _we_ can do - if you were to embrace that--"

"I don't want them to fear me!"

"Do you think," Pitch hisses, "if they see you, they may not think you are the Boogeyman's minion anyway? Even if you swear up and down, even if you prove to them that you are not? You have a natural gift, Jack. The same gift as I do."

"No. NO!" Jack chants furiously. "I'm not like you!" Again and again, as if the words could be a protective spell. A shield. _I'm not like you, not like you, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not._

But despite his claims, when Jack sees the ex-believer boy next, he ducks and hides. 

The mechanics of the Guardians were explained to him well enough - not believing equals not seeing - and yet some part of him understands that maybe, even though the boy's faith in him has flickered away, maybe a different part of his heart has taken home to a new faith. A faith of fear. Maybe the boy will see him, will be afraid of him, and that idea is so terrible in itself that he would rather be forgotten than risk being recalled as a bad dream.

Week after week, he visits the place where Pitch had been dragged, screaming, back into the center of the earth. And one day when the hole has opened wide enough for a grown adult to pass through, he hears a sound echoing up, not unlike the long-ago call of his sister's memory. This time it's not his name he hears, but a hushed breath of air, a voice not quite human but most definitely alive. 

Jack drops to his knees and hovers one ear over the space, waiting for more. 

Seconds pass, then minutes. It might be Pitch in there. But mostly likely, it's something new. Jack isn't sure, in all honestly, if he prefers this or not. 

He sits and listens for a long, long time.

If he likes, Jack can go as still as a statue, unblinking, unbreathing. It's one of the many quirks of being dead. This is what his body does now, poised over the edge of Pitch's seemingly hollow lair, waiting breathlessly for another clue as to what lurked inside. His mind is racing, but it's not fear that makes his heart feel heavy within his chest now. He thinks of the crying boy, of Pitch's evil taunting, and comes to a tangled conclusion. The air is cool, crisp but without snow - Halloween weather. The leaves are red. It's something like morning, to Jack.

With this in mind, he tucks his feet over the edge and slowly, slowly, drops inside.

\-----

If Pitch is home, he has either not been strong enough to make the place to his liking, or has decided he didn't care enough to try. The first is more likely, because moonlight breaks through like skylights in far too many places for the Nightmare King to be tolerant of. As it is, the devil himself is nowhere to be seen. Jack flits from stone to crumpled stone, never too far from the Man in the Moon's gentle touch, eyes sharp and watching for signs of life.

He hears it after a minute or so - clearer and closer than ever - an animal huffing. It sounds like a snort, derisive enough for personality to show through. Once more, it feels warm. Jack goes still again, hopeful and hesitant all at once, until he sees a shadow twitch nearby and a pair of gold eyes blinks to life in front of him.

Before he can think, it's on top of him. An impossibly heavy, impossibly _powerful_ weight. It's like being knocked over by the force of a wave of nightmare sand, or storm, with enough speed to bring North's sleigh burning back to mind. 

And it _hurts_. Jack feels the breath pushed from his lungs as he's flat on his back, gasping, hands locked tight on his staff. Frost sparks weakly at first, hampered by shock, then comes again stronger, pushing back until the thing growls low and deep in his face and all he can see is gold eyes, bright, angry--

A voice screams, "No!" 

It's not Pitch's voice.

But the pressure lightens up on his chest, and his swimming head starts to form complete thoughts again. "Wait! Wait, wait!" the voice continues, and Jack wants to laugh because it's _young_ , that sound, it's most definitely not the Nightmare King but rather rough and sweet and worried.

The Fearling growls again, warningly, and that's enough for Jack to get his feet back under him and push. Ice crawls up the Fearlings's legs, illuminating a rounded, bulky sort of shape, nothing like the nightmares of the past. With a strange, alien cry, the thing reels back, part of it's body falling under a slice of moonlight, and just for a moment Jack sees scales and a flash of a fanned tail. Something shapeless and furry is struggling at it's side, making a kind of grasping motion around it's middle, but Jack doesn't have time to sit and watch. He hops back on the dulled current of wind, just outside the realm of the moon's light, unwilling to show himself yet unwilling to stray too far.

 _They were wrong_ , he thinks with sudden dread, _he's not weak at all!_

"Get back!" Jack shouts. His voice comes out all wrong, quaking and winded from the blow.

Those wide, golden animal eyes are locked on him, furious and daring. There's a sound of snarling, gnashing teeth. Whatever it is, it's _big_. Moonlight illuminates the second shape, the scrambling, furry thing on two legs - Jack knows he's seen it somewhere before, but it's not until the spirit turns to face him that he knows exactly where from.

Looking back at him are two flat white eyes, round and glowing. They are lit by the dark like the lights of a firefly, dim and oddly fake, too perfectly circular to be real. He's seen them once before, when traveling further into the cold some seventy or so years back, down into a strange maze of a land mostly inhabited by fog. 

Back then, it was only at a distance he had spotted this creature. The memory surfaces, hazy and oddly unsettling - thick, white fog, the shapes of muted cliff tops and jagged peaks. It was the sort of land Jack had ventured in once or twice (not for fear, but for difficulty), a place thick with dread and mystery, so heavy with mist that the scattered shapes within were barely visible until they were all too close. He had seen those round firefly eyes atop a cliff, sitting tall over a pair of bat-like wings. A spirit he never knew by name, or legend. And all too quickly in a flash of black wings, he was gone.

Now Jack squints, heart hammering, and demands, "Who are you?"

The spirit doesn't answer at first. It's making strange noises directly to the Fearling - soothing noises, in a way, but they're peppered with clicking and hissing that sounds just about as human as Bunnymund's Pooka war cry. Finally, it quips back at him in a quavering, somewhat nasal tone: "--you're -- I know you're not a nightmare, I can tell. So just - let's talk. We don't have to fight. You're going to scare him--"

"Scare _him?_ " Jack laughs, somewhat hysterically. "Scare your Fearling, you mean?" Then, again, more demandingly: "Who _are_ you?"

"He's not a Fearling!" the voice comes again, exacerbated. Those glowing eyes bob as it's head moves. They don't blink or even shift the way a set of eyes should, human or not. Now that his own eyes are adjusting, Jack can see the fuzzy outline of a man-like figure, cloaked in bulky furs. The discs of painted eyes are peeking out from underneath. "He's friendly, really! I promise!"

The not-Fearling bares a wide set of teeth at him, bristling and huffing like a wild thing.

"Yeah, that's friendly all right." Jack doesn't know why he's laughing. Maybe because it's not Pitch here, after all. Maybe he's just relieved. The two spirits are beginning to take shape in the moonlight - the not-Fearling is broad and hunched on all fours, largely overshadowed by a pair of spiny wings. There are scales on it, visible here and there in the darkness. The other one, the talking one, is about Jack's size up close. Scratch that - smaller. The furs he's wearing are hanging off him in bulk. He's practically swimming in them. "You still haven't told me your name, you know." Jack presses again, staff gripped tightly in front of him.

"Name. Right. Name..." says the boy nervously. He must be just a boy, really. The voice is too small, too youthful. "I'm...S...Stoick, Stoick the Vast."

"...are you kidding me?"

"What's your name, then?"

"Jack Frost!"

The glowing eyes tilt slightly, and Jack gets the impression the boy is squinting at him through the dark. He must be too cloaked in shadow for a proper evaluation, because a beat later he's told, "You don't look very frosty." 

"You don't look very _vast._ " 

The boy makes an annoyed sound that sounds ridiculously like the not-Fearling's primal huffs. It's almost comical, but then, it's not exactly a comfort given the way the creature's constant growling hasn't diminished. "Well this is all very interesting...but I think it's about time we left. The Nightmare King's lair isn't exactly my favorite place to hang around."

"So why are you here, then?" Jack says, inching slowly into the moonlight as his confidence grows. It gives him a sense of purpose, remembering the Guardians, and how even the shyer, more reclusive fae surfaced to share their warnings. He'll need to give them as many details as possible, later. "Nobody's supposed to be here but Pitch Black."

"I, yeah...I know." He's stroking the not-Fearlings back again, the space between his wings. It looks like a dragon to him now - the wings, the tail - which is ridiculous, because if there's one creature Jack hasn't seen yet, it's a dragon. He's only noted illustrations, fantasy pictures in Jamie's books. "That's why I want to _leave._ "

"Your dragon...thing, it looks like Pitch's Nightmares." Jack starts accusingly, although without feeling. He doesn't want to leave just yet. "His coloring-"

"We _really_ don't have time for-"

"And if I just let you go, then-"

"-it's _not_ the best place to-"

"So lets go up, then." Jack lifts his chin, flickering his eyes toward the moonlight. The boy's head tilts, the odd shape of painted eyes shifting back at the motion. "And talk. Like you said." He smiles encouragingly at that, hating the way the crying child's face pops back into mind at the motion. For one brief but terrible moment, a thread of fear slips down his spine - what does he look like, to this stranger? What if he does look like Pitch's minion, lurking here in his lair, rotting away and totally unworthy of a chance? What if his smile is just as terrible as that sobbing boy had thought? He'd been so overcome with his self-righteous suspicion for the stranger, he hadn't even considered what sort of picture he was making for himself.

Silence for a moment. The boy, Stoick, is stroking his furry hands down the dragon's back soothingly, making those clicking, hissy noises again. Jack's reminded of the funny animal sounds Bunnymund makes when he grumbles to himself over paint palettes and gloss. It feels like another language. "It's okay, buddy," he says kindly, between whispers, "It's all okay."

Then he lifts those fake, glowing eyes back in Jack's direction and when he speaks his voice is different, flat and totally lacking in the tenderness he had shown for the dragon moments before. "Fine. Just - yeah, let's go. Lead the way."

He's not yet comfortable turning his back on the duo. But the wind is solid and assuring beneath his feet. So Jack takes them up, returning to the moonlight as swiftly as possible, and a beat or so later, he hears the rush of a dragon's wings flapping and folding neatly to pass through the hole in the surface of the earth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized just now that I hadn't marked this as a multi-chaptered thing. Oops.
> 
> It is u.u;;

He thinks that maybe his feet will touch the ground and the boy and dragon both will keep moving, as fast as lightening, through the air and into the sky, back to their maze of a twisted homeland, never to be seen again. 

But Jack's noiseless touch upon the earth is quickly followed by the surprisingly soft patter of dragon's claws, the rustle of leathery wings. Evening turns the sky a red-gold, rich with autumn light, and without the fog to hide them, Jack can see every inch of the strange duo in beautiful detail.

The dragon has his attention foremost. It's startlingly dark, certainly the shade of a Fearling, but outside of the web of the Nightmare King's darkness he sees the golden eyes have a strong tint of green to them. They're acidic in a way, bright with a different sort of life than Pitch's stark, eerie nightmares. His wingspan is impressive, stretching out briefly before folding against his inky body, and despite his reluctance Jack can't help but be amazed at the sheer _awesomeness_ of the beast. Unabashed, he's grinning.

'Stoick', meanwhile, is secured on his back. Attached to it, it seems. He's hunched over, swallowed up by the great bulk of his fur cloak. In the new, crisp light, Jack can see those round, glowing eyes are indeed fake. They're painted on a helmet, alight with some strange power of their own, but most definitely there for the sake of illusion. His real eyes are just barely visible, a leafy, speckled green, shadowed and decidedly human from behind the slits of the heavily painted metal mask.

Jack takes a step closer, half-floating on the north wind, and the dragon snorts distrustfully in return. He meets it's eyes eagerly - they're _amazing_ \- and although entirely inappropriate, he can't help but wonder, what's it _like_ to ride a dragon? Is it anything like North's sleigh? As fast? As dangerous? Can it breathe fire, like the stories? Can it dive with a streamlined shape like that, or spin?

" _Wow_ ," Jack breathes out, right at the exact moment that Stoick stammers, "Oh...gods..."

Then, both in unison: "What?"

"The dragon, it's like nothing I've ever seen," Jack explains hurriedly, while Stoick tumbles out with "Your face -- I was wrong, you - you're are pretty frosty after all--"

They stop again, together.

Jack feels breathless, cold to the core in a way that winter could never make him. He wants to tug his hood up suddenly, but the motion would only underline something about him he's not quite willing to divulge to this stranger. Instead he shrugs, tilts his shoulders against the staff, forcibly casual. "It's my name for a reason." 

He's pleased, actually, at how natural that comes out.

"Sorry." Stoick corrects himself quickly. "I saw some frost before, actually, now that you mention it. You got it on Toothless."

"The _dragon?_ " He's _got_ to be kidding this time. Stoick nods hastily, the painted white eyes bobbing on his forehead. The hood, he can see now, fakes the shape of a another face very well. The helmet itself is dark gray, steely, but painted on it is a tribal red shape that resembles and open mouth with pointed teeth. The green eyes within seem to peek out only as an after-image. It reminds him of butterflies he's seen before, the sort that display imitation faces on their back wings to fool hungry predators. 

"He won't hurt you." Stoick says, hunching over as he speaks. His arms move hastily beneath the fur cloak. Jack hears the sound of straps being loosened, metal snapping. Then Stoick slides off the dragon's back, landing lopsided upon the ground. His gait is all wrong. Jack wonders, briefly, if he's been hurt in Pitch's lair, or if it's just the unfamiliar territory of ground beneath his feet rather than the tension of the dragon's back. "I can explain."

Jack nods and dares a step closer, then two, then three. He wants to hear, really. He wants to hear everything.

And he nearly does, too. 

But it's then that something new catches his attention. 

Stoick is nearly within arm's reach when Jack sees a differently pair of yellow eyes - not yellow-green like the dragon, but true gold - peeking up at him hungrily from the hole of Pitch's lair. The spider-leg lines of it's body are twitching across the ground clumsily. It's hollow face is turned to Stoick's back.

Jack shouts, "Down, NOW!" And several things happen at all once. 

Toothless, who had gone quiet and watchful before, lurches into action at the sight of the Fearling. Stoick, in sudden panic, makes a half-turn and ducks, throwing his arms above his head protectively at the same time that Jack responds with an instinctual swing with his staff, scattering ribbons of crackling frost over the air.

BAM.

The dragon pounces the Fearling in a heartbeat. Jack sees enough vapor and black smoke to know the creature of darkness is making it's escape. There's little point in capturing shadows, after all. His frost is effectively useless, too uncontrolled for proper aim. Stoick, however, takes the accidental blunt end of his staff to the shoulder. He stumbles and shouts out, more in surprise than in pain, but something about his movements aren't properly afraid and soon Jack can feel the furry weight of Stoick shoved against him, uneven and unexpected, seizing him around the collar indignantly.

Whether an attack of just an attempt at self defense, Jack is too caught up in the chaos to tell, but he reacts in an instant. Wide-eyed, he grasps the boy by the front of his oversized cloak and whirls him around with the wind's help. In the blink of an eye Stoick's flat against the ground, Jack's staff pressed to his throat just under the mask. The boy is struggling beneath him, awkwardly slippery within the tangle of his cloak, tilting his chin back at the bite of the staff. It's a odd display of submission considering he's still kicking and squirming where he's pinned, and at the motion, Jack catches a glimpse of his jaw - his real jaw, not the line of his high collar or the shape of the metal mask. It's not even a half inch of skin, but it's stripped red like dark wine, so much so that he doesn't even recognize it as flesh at immediately.

But there's no time to think on it. That dragon won't be occupied with the Fearling forever. "What was _that?_ " Jack shouts at him, livid. Scared. "I'm on your side, aren't I?" His hands tighten on his staff. He thinks, briefly, that he can roll them both over, hopefully hide behind Stoick before the dragon can come for him -- then get out of there, maybe go for low ground--

But too late. Toothless is upon him before he can finish the thought, slamming down hard on his side with one powerful thrust of it's head so that Jack goes spinning over and over again some ten yards to his left, sputtering on dirt and dust and the sudden crackling pain in his ribs.

His head hits the ground, hard. It takes a second to get up from that, to let his eyes uncross and his brain process the cacophony of sounds. Wings flapping, a voice shouting. New dust in the air.

When he looks up again, they're gone. Jack struggles fast to his feet, blinking up at the burning light of the sun. He can just make out a speck of blackness in the distance. By the time he's done blinking away his confusion, there's nothing in the sky but blue.

 _No._ Jack thinks wildly. _Wait--!_

In fright, he swivels to look at the hole in the earth again. There are a few semi-deep gorges in the dirt, where the dragon's talons had dug in. A long, crooked line where his tail had swept. Small signs of frost. 

No Fearlings now.

His chest rises and falls rapidly. The whole front of him feels strangely warm, from where Stoick had been shoving back against him, clumsy and too-small in his sea of old furs. Blue eyes dart across the terrain, half-curious, half-paranoid for signs of more darkness. 

He wonders, briefly, if the Fearling was just a badly timed coincidence, or a trap to break them apart before they could speak. He wonders if Stoick is for him, or against him, or if maybe the boy didn't think him trustworthy looking enough, just like Pitch had promised. He wonders if he should be at all surprised.

\----

A closer inspection later brings to attention a few fibers of the boy's fur clothing and a small bauble of metal well-polished and roughly shaped like a skull. Whatever it is, it must have come loose from his person during the struggle. The metal is small enough to fit easily between his thumb and forefinger, with a little carved loop in the back as if it had been used once as a button, or a clasp.

Jack pinches the strands of fur between his fingers, squints at the auburn color, and lets them loose on the wind again. The skull charm, he slips into his pocket. 

North taught him about the importance of items, once. Ordinary objects well-loved enough to become magical in their own right, lit by the touches of it's loving owners, blessed with their care and memory and time. He takes with him the wonder of the dragons eyes, the precious information on a single tired Fearling and the strange antics of the helmeted boy while the little hunk of metal rests lightly in his pocket, too fiercely warm to be anything ordinary. It feels like a husk of coal against his hip, faintly glowing, alive with the siphoned warmth of wine-red fingers.

\----

North doesn't speak through the entirety of Jack's story.

He sits there, sipping hot chocolate, blue eyes narrowed to slits over the rim of the rich scarlet mug. Jack is an avid storyteller, all flying hands and wide eyes, pacing and swooping about the room in his own wild way as he recites the quickness of the black dragon, the sharp, guilty way that the boy had turned when he thought he was being threatened.

"No Pitch." North concludes after a long moment, when Jack has drained himself of most of his pent-up energy and moved on to taking up space on North's desk with his staff propped loosely between his knees. 

"No Pitch." Jack agrees, firmly. He can't keep himself from nodding to underline the point, again and again. It feels important that he be a part of this, the detailed map of whens and wheres that had long since followed the Nightmare King's defeat. "And one Fearling. Just one."

'Just.' A little fear is natural, he knows, but.

North sets the mug down on his crowded desk with a musical clatter, rumbling in assent. The room is cold around them, a natural breath of ice. It's both of their elements - one more so than the other - but they pair well together, wonder and fun. Jack likes North a great deal. He likes the faith the great Guardian installs so easily in him. He likes the way North has never questioned the state of his face, or the biting chill of his hand. He's liked him twice as much ever since he cut Pitch down after the Boogeyman's sneering of " _are you so sure you want to add decay to your Christmas cheer, Cossack?_ " He still keeps the Russian doll, his center, safely tucked within his home at the bottom of the lake. North doesn't know that, but Jack doesn't forget. It's precious, like a thread connecting him to the Pole, or a secret message that says he has a home somewhere else, just in case he ever needs it. And he does. He always does.

So when North starts to speak, thoughtful and calm, Jack listens. "This boy, I am thinking, is most likely just misunderstanding. A small mishap. He is...good kid. Good intentions."

There's an implication there. "You mean you know him?" Jack ventures dubiously.

"We've met." North admits, spreading his palms wide as if to say, _don't be so surprised!_ "Why he was in Pitch's cave, I do not know. But he is on nice list, so to speak. Benefit of doubt."

"You sound so sure" Jack says, even though he's fairly sure himself. Mostly, he finds himself pressing for the sake of more information. It fascinates him to picture North and this dragon-boy in a room together, talking. He forgets sometimes how much older the other Guardians are. How long they've been wandering the Earth before he came stumbling into their immortal world. "The dragon reminded me of a Fearling, in a way. Er...Toothless." he adds in recollection, the corner of his mouth twitching up slightly.

North smiles in agreement. "Toothless." he acknowledges.

"...awful lot of _teeth_ on that toothless dragon."

"Is not the best name, I think." There's a sparkle of laughter in his eyes. Jack smiles down at his knees briefly, watching the frost ferns around his staff curl and crystalize as his fingers rest in waiting. "Can you ask him directly? Maybe one of the Guardians can find him. He said his name was Stoick..."

North's eyebrows shoot up. "Is that what he told you?"

Jack mouths wordlessly for a moment. Then he leans forward, chortling and victorious. "I _knew_ it! I knew he was lying! 'Stoick the Vast,' he says! I'm no judge of names, but you may as well call Bunny a frog--"

"Now, now!"

"It doesn't matter." he concedes with mirth before North can start to lecture. "He's like one of those shy spirits, right? Like the Pharaoh woman who came to talk Fearlings with us. He probably just tends to his own little secret part of the world and leaves all the Guardian things to the Guardians and winter to, well, me."

North purses his lips.

"Maybe so." he says at last, shrugging in that boyish way he does. Jack grins and beams up at him thankfully, shouldering his staff on his way to the window. 

"Forget it, then." Jack decides in a would-be-careless way, hopping up on the ledge with all the weightlessness of one of his snowflakes. "I mean, I'll probably never see him again anyway."


	3. Chapter 3

For the next few weeks following North's reassurance and the gentle reminder that coaxing a reclusive spirit out in the open would be next to impossible anyway, Jack decides to let the dragon boy go. He busies himself with frost flowers and chasing redbirds until the moon is glossy and silver through his tired eyes and the prospect of rest begins to look more and more attractive. Jack doesn't need to sleep, and often he doesn't bother, but that doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable to take a break every now and then. He likes to hibernate in the summer, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time. On other occasions, he'll find temporary home in different climates, lands where snow is never out of place. He's spent periods curled up in Punjam Hy Loo with the musical chattering of Toothiana's fairies lulling him to sleep, even one humid week in a hammock of vines within the Warren after a final snowstorm had drained him of a great deal of his energy.

But for the most part, when he wants to rest, Jack just returns to the lake. 

With his staff in hand, it's easy to crack the ice apart, slip inside the cool waters of his birthplace and let the deathly embrace draw him back under. If he forms the ice back around him carefully enough, it creates a net of moonbeams, as soft and comfortable as any plush cushion or childhood nightlight. For safety, he never leaves the lake broken or thin in his passing, constantly enforcing the surface of it even while sleeping on that off-chance that any wandering child may dare to venture overhead.

He doesn't want a repeat of late time.

Breathing can wait. Jack doesn't tend to do a whole lot of it while he's resting, anyway. It's only around midnight when he next cracks the ice again, hauling himself up with a stretch and a yawn for the starry sky to wash him in moonlight. And it doesn't take long to realize that someone is waiting for him.

It gives him a start, to see movement so fearlessly close. _Pitch_ , Jack thinks wildly (because deep down, he's been waiting for Pitch for longer than he likes to admit) and on the heels of that -- _a fearling?_ They come in all sizes, the larger hooved nightmares and the smaller, scurrying rats that circle around children's legs like in their hunger. The prospect of the agile creature making rounds over his head being one of Pitch's shadows isn't so far-fetched.

But whatever it is, it's tiny. Jack only sees a blur of it, zipping around his ears like a wasp.

He swats at it quickly, sinking back into his lake in spite of himself, when a familiar twittering buzzes next to his cheek and quite suddenly he _laughs_ , realizing at once through the sleepy fog of his brain who he's dealing with after all.

"Baby Tooth!"

Dark emerald and bristling beneath the moon rays, the rolls her violet eyes at him in annoyance and shoots past his head, wings in a hummingbird blur. Jack makes a clumsy turn, half-submerged in ice water and still dripping from his long underwater nap. "What's the matter? Were you waiting out here just for me?"

She's nipping at his jacket, batting fretfully at his hair. Jack can feel her tiny fingers combing anxiously, wings beating against his skin. It's almost ticklish. He makes a grab for her and misses by inches. "Baby Tooth! Come on, will you stop?"

 _NO_ , is the answer, apparently, because Baby Tooth doesn't cease her anxious fluttering until he's dragged himself entirely out of the lake and re-formed it behind him, as glassy and thick as if it had never even been touched. Then she skitters across his stomach, burrowing in his pocket like in a flash of glossy feathers. When she comes back out, heavy with the weight of something new, Jack only just manages to grasp her between his blue-black fingers before she can escape with her prize.

" _Hey!_ " he snorts indignantly.

To her credit, Baby Tooth looks entirely innocent there, fluffy, bright and beautiful with Tooth's rainbow palette sprinkled about her face and her spikes of purple eyelashes framing wide eyes. He feels almost criminal holding her with his rotted fingers, all spotted with death and decay and thin, webbed lines of fractured ice. But he doesn't let go, and Baby Tooth doesn't struggle or cry the way she did when it was Pitch keeping her in his deathly grasp. Unafraid but clearly annoyed, she actually props an arm against his thumb in casual exacerbation, huffing out a tolerant breath and drumming her fingers on his skin expectantly.

"You ever hear of personal space?" Jack shoots at her, raising his eyebrows playfully. She blinks at him twice, smiling sweetly, before beginning the slow task of attempting to wriggle out of his blackened fingers. Jack plucks her up in one hand and with the other, maneuvers her stolen item back into his possession. It's small enough for her to carry - like a tooth, or a coin - and in his newly awoken state, it nearly thinks it _is_ a coin, a heavy silver one that feels a bit too over-rough against his skin.

And then he remembers the boy and the dragon. 

Baby Tooth wilts guilty as Jack stares with mounting confusion at the miniscule skull charm sitting there in the center of his palm.

"This is Stoick's." he says slowly, lifting his gaze from the pale piece of rock to Baby Tooth's reluctant, caught-in-the-act nodding. "The thing he dropped..."

She twitters at him helplessly.

"Why do _you_ want it?" he wonders, beginning to perk up. "Is it yours?" She shakes her head, wringing out her delicate hands anxiously and eyeing the rock as if devising some desperate way to snatch it back from his fingers. "Is it...a memory?"

Baby Tooth's tiny noises grow instantly quieter. Her beautiful eyes stare up at him, round and sorrowful.

"Oh." Jack says, feeling a little guilty himself. He loosens his gentle grip on her and she shifts to sit along the curve of his thumb. After a moment or so, Jack feels her give his knuckle a knowing little pat.

He doesn't understand the specifics (didn't only teeth hold memories? Maybe the skull charm was made from a tooth? A carved one?), but he remembers the weight of the golden box in his hand and his human face, still bright with beautiful life, immortalized in loving detail on the side. Back then, he would have turned over everyone stone on the planet to get his hands on his memories again.

"Oh." Jack echoes, because this...this changes everything.

So together in silent agreement, they bring the precious rock to Toothiana.

\---

It's a little sad to think of, but Toothiana's fairies know the way around the planet better than the fairy queen herself. Jack tries to hide his amusement as she jabbers with her mini-selves at a mile a minute, her high, clear voice like a tape on fast forward, occasionally delving into snippets of Icelandic and Russian and even a few musical quips of words he's vaguely suspicious may be some form of birdsong.

"It's left - left - right - left - right - straight - down - well, _no_ , I'm not sure, but he'll see you, won't he?"

It's the thing about the foggy land that Stoick apparently hails from - the thick gauze of white mist, the jagged peaks and endless circling turns - it's like a maze in every way. He'd find it vaguely comforting that apparently he's not the only one who is helplessly lost around the perimeter if it didn't mean that getting inside was going to be more of a problem than he had suspected.

Toothiana had told him once, in the midst of a frighteningly realistic story concerning greed and gift-giving, that the blessing of those not-quite-human was to know operations beyond the what an average human would expect. "And if you don't want to be seen," she had said, with her rainbow of feathers wilting sadly, "then you'll quickly find the best places to hide."

"You can't return it?" Jack says gently when Toothiana fretfully begins smoothing down her crest with both hands, a habitual gesture he had been quick to identify as a sign of frustration.

"Oh, I can..." she starts slowly, frowning at the charm. It's pursed in her fingers, buzzed over by several mini-fairies, looking filthy and completely out of place in the clean brilliance of her golden palace. "At the very least, I'll wait here for him to collect it. It may take a bit, but it'll be back in his possession eventually." Toothiana's violet eyes flicker up to him uncertainly. "How did find it, Jack?"

"It...it fell," Jack answers distractedly, "What do you - he knows how to get here? Have you two...?"

"Well, yes. He's visited before. Not too often but then, he's busy. We both are."

"You _both_ know him, then! You and North!" It shouldn't be surprising, really. "That's..."

"Well, we've been around a while, Jack." she says, smiling consolingly. "You get to know each other. Sometimes, even the shy ones come out just because they're curious! Or sometimes they're just out of action for a long time, so they don't get to be introduced until they're summoned by the right sign. Like a planet aligning just right, or an old friend setting foot on their ground." She turns the charm over in her hand, inspecting it for damage. "Actually," she adds softly, "Sandy was like that. He was sleeping for ages before Pitch came along the first time."

"So he was right in his element, then." Jack laughs, prompting a sweet smile from her in return before her eyes flicker back to the charm, thoughtful. "So you're just going to keep it here?"

"I'll have my fairies run to the Nest first. Maybe if they're lucky they'll spot him..."

The Nest? That's a new name for what Jack has long since been thinking of as 'the twisting maze at the end of the world.' "Then...why not just let me take it back?"

"What? But Jack, why..?"

"He's lost something precious, right? If he really wants it back, he'll won't turn me down on his doorstep. Besides, you've got plenty of errands to run without having to go fixing my mistake, too."

Toothiana searches his face.

"And I wouldn't mind explaining," Jack adds reluctantly, "That I didn't steal it or anything to start with. ...I _didn't._ " he adds when her eyebrows inch higher, amused.

"Well...sure, Jack." Toothiana trails off with a gleam in her eye that seems to say, _what sort of trouble did you cause this time?_

 _No trouble at all_ , he thinks, _but I'm not so sure it won't catch up._

\---

Stoick's 'nest' is located directly off a tiny, weathered island that Toothiana calls the Peaceable Cove. It's surrounded by a stretch of ocean for miles and miles, as unpredictable as the wind. Jack's seen it choppy and white with foam, frozen in places or as dark as stone, sometimes even glass-flat and eerily reflective. There's something supernatural about it that makes him think twice about skimming the edge with frost, almost as if the mysterious lull of beating waves suggests something lurking watchfully underneath.

Navigating the rocks is useless, but he tries for the sake of keeping occupied. After an hour or so, Jack's almost positive he's passed the same formation for the fifth time - a spiny looking rock with what looks like a wooden beam broken along the edge. Maybe it's a trick for trespassers, but it's easy to fall under the impression that he's being toyed with, much like a child wandering a funhouse of mirrors.

Eventually the north wind guides him to a graceful land upon a cliff of bare rock, pleasantly wet and cool beneath his bare, cracked feet. Jack wanders vaguely, head tipped back, hands stuffed hard into his pockets with his fingers clasped tight around the stone. Calling out feels taboo somehow, but there's no way around it.

"Dragon-boy?" he calls, and the echo carries it further, further.

Nothing. It can't be helped, then. Jack pinches the charm between thumb and forefinger and holds it above his head like an offering. "You dropped something!" 

It's not even that loud, his voice, but surrounded by white shadow and stone, it comes off invasive and booming.

Jack waits. And waits. And just when he starts to lower his arm, his ears pick up a faint whistling and by pure instinct he ducks--

\-- _fearlings--?_

\--the shape of a nightmare creature, inky black and foreboding, but Jack knows the shape of those wings and the heavily cloaked form tight against it's back. He doesn't dodge until they're _close_ , too close; he thinks he's pulled his hand away by mere centimeters before the dragon had raced in to try and intercept it. A blurry snap of Stoick's gloved hand making a grab for his stolen treasure...and then gone again.

Jack hears the dragon scream from within the mist. It's an odd, high-pitched whirl of a sound, almost bird-like and strangely playful. It reminds him of the children declaring war in winter games, playing tag and hide-and-seek with hoodies full of snowball ammunition.

He smiles in a wild, eager way before realizing that surely Stoick will steer that thing back around in seconds - or worse yet, leave entirely. "Wait!" he calls, waving his hand with the charm clasped inside above his head happily. "Come back! I'm giving it back!"

Does he hear wings flapping? It's too distant to tell.

"Dragon-boy!"

Silence. Pale shadows. Jack stares hard, grinning hopefully at the rocks until one of them detaches itself in a decidedly dragon-like shape and slinks forward, predator-powerful and distrustful.

Enormous green eyes, tinted gold and burning.

_Wow._

Jack holds his hand out, tries to look as inviting as possible while suddenly rather hyper-aware of how his face must look amongst the midst. Dead and cold. _At least my teeth are friendly_ , he thinks with a quiet laugh. Stoick's head is canted to one side, barely visible amongst the fog. Jack can only just make out the furry shape of his hood pulled high and gathering loosely around his shoulders.

"It's for you," he dares to say, watching the majesty of the not-fearling-dragon inching closer, it's dilated pupils narrowed in warning. There's a comfort in the way a gloved hand at the creature's neck is stroking, soothing. "Don't you want it?"

He tries not to think of Pitch when the words leave his mouth. _Don't you want them? Your memories._

Not five yards away, the dragon stops short, bristling.

"Give it back." Stoick says quietly. His voice is somewhat lacking from his Jack remembers it. There's less personality, more bite. 

"Here." he stretches his hand out impossibly as if to shorten the ridiculous gap between them with his feet still rooted firmly to the earth. Jack may be a daring soul by nature, but provoking the dragon and keeping Stoick's company seem to be conflicting paths. "Take it."

"...give it _back_ , Frost."

Unsure of how else to go about it, Jack pulls his arm back tellingly for a second before tossing the charm into a wide arc throughout the air. The dragon darts forward swiftly, just a foot or so to bring himself within reach, and the boy atop his back fumbles and falls in his desperation to capture the stone before it hits the ground. 

Jack hears his sharp gasp of relief when it's safely clasped within his hands again.

There's an odd, tangled sensation fluttering about in his throat. He tells himself it's not empathy, let alone sadness. "It came off you when the Fearling showed up." he explains, busying his now-empty hands by turning them palm-up for the dragon to criticize. "Speaking of which...how's your head?"

"What, that little bump?" Stoick tucks the charm somewhere within the depths of his heavy cloak before pulling the hood back, revealing his armored head with the red tribal markings painted on. The fake white circles of eyes are there on his forehead, simple and eerie. Without the hood to hide him so much, Jack can spot a few tufts of dark hair sticking out the bottom and what looks like small metal spikes running in a strip all the way to the back. It reminds him of a bird's crest, or - probably more the intention - the spines on a dragon's back. "That was nothing. Toothless hit you harder than that. How are your...er...ribs?" he finishes awkwardly, some of the personality thankfully creeping back into his tone.

Jack smirks and brushes the front of his hoodie for emphasis. "Not even a bruise." 

"You're lucky he didn't take a bite out of you." Stoick warns, swiping a hand over his side again in what Jack assumes is a paranoid gesture, double-checking that his charm was still safely tucked away. "He must have thought you weren't really going to hurt me. Am I right, buddy?" he adds affectionately to the dragon.

"Yeah, well....'Toothless', you said. It'd be hard to bite me without teeth, wouldn't it?"

Toothless blinks at him. There's incredible judgment in his face for such a fearsome creature, a wholly unamused look to his eyes. It makes him laugh, and Stoick sigh, rubbing a hand through the small bit of hair peeking out around his nape. "That's funny." he deadpans, totally devoid of amusement.

"It was a misunderstanding. A Fearling showed up and you didn't know what hit you. Us." Jack leans on his staff, harmless. "So, we both panicked." he offers. "I'm sorry."

Stoick just looks at him, and Jack thinks from out of the blue, _only that's not your name, is it?_

Instead, he starts with "You never did tell me what you were doing in Pitch's place."

"No," Stoick agrees, with his hands stilling on Toothless's saddle. He can't tell if that's a ' _no, you're right, I didn't'_ or a ' _no, don't hang around, get out before I kick you out'._

"Can we talk?" Jack tries.

"...put the staff down."

Well. He hadn't even thought about that one. Carefully (because there's some bad blood here but surely only Jack can know that?) he leans down, making a move as if to rest the crook gently upon the stone. "Then come off the dragon," he says, not quite letting the comfort of the icy wood leave his hands. "Please."

Toothless goes still, and so, in turn, does Stoick. Jack touches the tip of his staff to the floor, a compromise, and after a beat the boy turns and reaches low under his cloak, twisting to one side -- his left -- and doing something with the sadle that Jack can't quite see.

Then Toothless reluctantly lowers his head, eyes fixed on Jack all the while and purring strangely in his throat. Stoick pushes off him and slides to the ground and just for a moment Jack sees it, a flash of rusty metal where his leg should be.

Jack uncurls his fingers entirely from around his staff.

And slowly, uncertainly, Stoick takes one limping step forward.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack's never took the time to recline in this desolate maze before, but now that the opportunity turns up, he finds it's a lot like laying just below the glassy surface of his lake. Reality seems to linger like an afterglow, a faint suggestion of what is tangible and what is invisible. Still, he's a little surprised when Stoick perches fearlessly on the edge of the cliff, skinny legs dangling off into the white abyss below. Toothless curls up beside him like a great territorial cat, his tail swaying absently as his counterpart scratches him fondly below the chin. Rumbling little purrs were emitting from deep within his throat, but his bright eyes were fixed suspiciously on Jack.

And Jack couldn't take his eyes away. With the black dragon so starkly painted against the pale backdrop, he could see more detail than he'd had the chance to glimpse before, in the darkness of Pitch's lair or in the quick chaos outside. There's a saddle attached to his back - reasonable enough, he thinks -- but it extends in a mechanical contraption all the way to his two-toned tail. There's red paint on one fake leathery fin, the same kind Stoick's decorated his helmet with. 

And there's the helmet itself - in dim fog, he can just make out the odd glow of the white circles on a metal brow. Weirdly enough, it reminds him of Jamie, back when Jamie was still at the age of counting baby teeth. He and Sophie had once painted his bedroom together with glow-and-the-dark shooting stars: an unattractive, dull gray in daylight but wonderfully neon and luminescent in the blackness of night. It's a little silly to think of, in retrospect. He can't imagine how this this spirit could have gotten his hands on something similar. 

After a moment or so, Stoick follows his gaze and raps a knuckle against the helmet in acknowledgement. "There's a compound in Razorwing eggs that glows after you heat it to the right temperature. They get broken all the time, so I've got a whole basket full of shells. You just mash it into paste, and..."

"Wait - so, there are _other_ dragons?" Jack blurts out before Stoick finish, eyes excitably wide.

"We-e-ell," Stoick drawls out, wringing his hands back together in his lap. "Not exactly, no."

He looks down at his knees. Jack scoots closer, shaking his head in disbelief. His eyes catch the metal replacing his calf again - it's incredible, really, how mismatched the prosthetic is. Even with the great length of tattered cape to hide it behind, he's amazed he hadn't noticed it earlier. It doesn't even resemble a leg anymore, not really - there's not even a makeshift foot to balance on, just an odd loop of a metal a bit like like a peg, weighted for impact and rusted by wind and water.

Stoick makes a paranoid twitch with both hands as if to pull the cape over his knees, and Jack quickly meets his eyes again. They're very pretty, and quite a lot like Toothless's now that he has the luxury to compare. Green and gold like the dragon's, but mostly just green, green, green. The left one looks swollen in the shadow of his helmet, as if in a permanent wince. Jack isn't sure it's the tribal paint playing tricks on him or if the skin there is really that such a bloody strip of red.

Stoick tilts his jaw and swings the false leg as if to prove a point. "It's actually pretty common where I come from."

"Sorry," Jack corrects in haste, kicking himself for staring. The boy shrugs, looking out and out, into the distance where the black water is forever pushing and pulling against their tall slab of rock. Jack is eagerly quiet, waiting for more, but when it seems clear that Stoick has no idea how to begin he finds himself diving in to help. "That was really only the third time I ever payed a visit to Pitch's nightmare realm. His name, not mine."

He gets another head tilt in response. "Oh?"

"It's not too warm a place, is it?" Jack raises his eyebrows, smiling. When Stoick remains silent, he continues awkwardly, "I first met Pitch when he came out of his hiding place to challenge the Guardians. The four of them and me, before I made it official. I...guess you weren't there for that, huh."

Toothless gives a snort and tosses his head derisively. 

"I know about it." Stoick says with a wary smile in his voice.

Jack grins crookedly, his eyes on the dragon. "Well, he went back into the ground, him and all his 'big, bad nightmares'. It's just been little glimpses, here and there, but there's cracks in the earth again and...it's just unsettling is all." Toothless gives a another huff, resting his great head over his paws and flattening his ears back against his head. Jack watches, rather contently, as Stoick's hand moves automatically to pet the newly bared space along his jaw. "He invited me in, once." he adds quietly. The words leave his mouth like a ghost, almost as if he hopes, maybe, the other boy won't hear them.

"Invi- what, like a _guest?_ " Stoick's starts skeptically, twisting a bit to face him. "To live with him?" he tries again, flailing somewhat with the hand that isn't occupied with coddling Toothless. "Thor almighty...talk about a bad roommate..."

Jack smiles. "I guess he thought we had a lot in common."

He doesn't intend for it to sound the way it does. Never the less, Stoick goes tense, and Jack feels himself pause mid-breath and stay like that, lifeless. Suddenly he's very aware of his face, the tiny fingers of ice that form over the surface of his skin, the rotted tips of his ears and nose that must be disgusting to an outside eye. 

If Stoick thinks so, he doesn't let it show. Instead he flickers his gaze from Jack to Toothless thoughtfully before extending a gloved hand, palm-up, for Jack's inspection.

_Okay...?_

Curiously, he stretches his fingers out as if to fit it in the other's grasp, but Stoick just twists his hand and guides it over and across to Toothless's scaly nose, where the dragon gives him a grudging nudge and allows himself to be petted.

And... _oh._

The scales are leathery and cool, rough ridges under the cold pads of his fingers and he hisses in a delighted breath, scooting closer to Stoick in the process of offering the mythical creature more affection. Toothless is tolerant at best, eyes half-lidded and rather bored, closing every now and then as Jack searches for the right spot to scratch. His head is practically in Stoick's lap, but dragon-boy didn't seem to mind. If anything, he seems more relaxed now than ever.

Jack laughs under his breath, a steady stream of delighted nonsense like a child unwrapping a gifts on Christmas morning. He almost doesn't catch it when Stoick finally speaks. "I...uh...went in to look for nightmare sand." he explains in an undertone. "I think it might be helpful to Toothless. If you know how to get your hands on it...that might be helpful, too."

Jack presses his palms flat along the underside of Toothless's jaw, curling his fingers up and smiling gleefully as the dragon purrs in a self-satisfied way for more. He's not sure how to absorb this information. It sounds suspicious, but then, Pitch's control over sand was linked from Sandy to start with. And besides, the honesty is a comfort. "I can get you dreamsand, maybe." Jack suggests, "I know a certain golden little man who would be happy to help."

"Thanks, but." Stoick sighs, withholding, and Toothless settles back at the dejected sound, curling up close to the boy's side where Jack's hands can stretch no further to reach him. "It...it has to be nightmare sand."

"...he's not a fearling, then..."

"No. He's just had a close brush. It's, ah -- it's a little personal, actually. Sorry. But he doesn't belong to Pitch, just so you know. He's free."

Toothless rumbles assent and slides his magnificent eyes closed again. The air seems dimmer without them, less alive. There's something decidedly comforting about the sentience of the dragon. Jack doesn't feel fear radiating off him the way Pitch's nightmares do, or the instinctual tug that even the lesser fearlings can bring, a sort of jarring, displaced feeling that seeps through the ribs and into the heart like a phantom passing through.

North is right. He can't imagine them belonging to Pitch. Either of them. And speaking of which... "I talked to North, and Tooth. You seem to be pretty popular for a hermit."

"...they're old friends..." Stoick starts modestly.

"Do they call you 'Stoick' too?"

He's pretty sure he didn't imagine the way the boy's shoulders curled inward at that.

"It...it's, _Hiksti._ " He says it like _Heyc-sti_ , so that it the _k_ catches in his throat just so. "It means, Hiccup."

"Hiccup." Jack repeats, and Stoick -- _Hiccup_ \-- nods slowly, heavily, like he's waiting for something specific to follow. Jack can't think for the life of him what that could be. He's smiling again, because it feels like a secret he may have only just earned. And also because, honestly? It's the perfect, ridiculous, _anti-climatic_ name for such a dark, mysterious spirit. As far as jokes go, this one couldn't be better.

It's really, really hard not to laugh at the way that Stoick's posture deflates, grudging and unamused.

"Yeah, yeah..."

"It fits you better." he says. "You don't look like a 'Stoick.'"

And Hiccup laughs a little, a high, tumbling sound. It starts off genuine but by the end it feels fractured, wrong. "You, ahah...you wouldn't be the first to say that..."

"Yeah?" Jack feels like he's stepped on something delicate.

"Yeah. I mean, no, you're right. That's a good thing. I'm not him, I'm me. I shouldn't use that name, really. It's, its stupid." Hiccup shifts in place, awkward. "Not the name, just."

"Who was he?" The past tense spills out without intention, so Jack doesn't understand, at first, why Hiccup's hands are twisting like that around the corners of his cloak, until the implication of death settles in and the pause between breaths become too long.

"My father." 

They're silent for a moment, sitting on the edge of the abyss like that, with Jack's legs curling up tight against his chest and Hiccup swinging that one foot, the one the ends in metal, off the edge of the chasm. He can hear Toothless's breathing like the rumbling of a river, all soft and soothing and alive. The three of them seem so small in the vast expanse of mist; Jack feels like a lost child, vulnerable and misplaced as he perches there on the jagged edge of a broken cliff, staring at the spot on Hiccup's calf where the flesh and bone turns abruptly into steel. It must have been horrible, if he was awake for it. If he was alive for it.

"I'm sorry," Jack says, no longer even sure what he's sorry for, only that's his throat is tighter now and his heart feels warm and oddly hopeful, like a candle in the dark. Hiccup shrugs. He looks so very small, wrapped up in the too-big cloak as if it were a safety blanket.

"Eh, there's no need to be. He had a good life. A great life, really. Very...very brave."

"So it was worth it?" _Emma._ That's who he's thinking of. Her brown eyes and her dimpled smile and the way her little hands stretched out as the water pulled him under and away. He's reminded of outliving his sister.

"Yeah." says Hiccup, so quietly that it's almost lost under the gentle lull of Toothless's breathing. 

There's more that should be said. Memories of them. Details, like the shape of Emma's young face. The way she would bounce on the balls of her feet while waiting for him to hurry up and play. He was so happy, back then, when he finally could remember her. Pulling her to safety, saving her. The idea that maybe Hiccup has experienced something similar is so bright and precious in his mind that he's not even sure how to go about handling it. 

Bunnymund had told him, once, that not everyone was so peaceful at the memory of death. Grief came in different shapes and forms. Jack had experienced that later, when Emma's birthday rolled around and he recalled how he used to hide bouquets of dandelions in her room throughout the week to celebrate. Their house would be scattered for days with hidden clouds of lions-tooth seeds. He had picked a few for safekeeping the year after Pitch's defeat, uncomfortable at the ice that formed around the stems, choking off the healthy glow of the little plants. He placed them around Burgess and around the lake and he had wondered, vaguely, if Emma had felt disappointment when he missed her birthday the next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.

Mostly, when he thinks of her, he feels joy. She's his sticking point, the hearth-fire of love that keeps him centered. He thinks of protecting her and he's glad, so glad, that it happened the way it did.

Hiccup draws his furry cloak around himself tighter still, his fingers curled to fists around the tattered seam, and Jack wonders if he's glad, too, or if he's still in that stage of counting the missed birthdays.

"It couldn't have been better, really." Hiccup says, like they're discussing the weather. "Big, fiery battle. Sword in hand. That's a one-way ticket to Valhalla."

"Valhalla." Jack repeats slowly.

"Maybe you call it 'heaven,'" he corrects with a little brightness to his voice, like he's genuinely interested in Jack's version of the tale. "Or your earth bed, or whatever. But we're Vikings. Or, we were. I was. Kind of." He stammers at that, voice breaking, but before Jack can question it he goes rambling on: "Valhalla is like our saving grace. If you die the right way, you get a party with the Gods afterward, all the fighting and drinking charming family reunions you can ask for."

"And what if you die the wrong way?" 

"Then I guess you just die." Hiccup concludes very flatly, waving a hand. "Or if you're very, very special you turn invisible and watch the world fill up with new inventions for the rest of forever."

He cants his head a little and Jack get the impression he's being given a once-over.

"No offense." Hiccup adds, not giving Jack much time to wonder if he's supposed to be offended. "It's really very interesting, the things that have changed. If I knew all I had to do was _die_ to have so many of my questions answered, I wouldn't have been hiding behind a shield for so long in dragon training."

Jack sputters out a laugh and makes an abortive move as if to bury his face in his hands.

"Sorry." says Hiccup sheepishly, "Maybe that was too soon."

"It's been three hundred years," Jack chokes out, the laughter still bubbling up within him. Its in some ways, shocked, but mostly he's tickled by the image of it - this kid, laughing at death, the way he had smiled before in the chasm of ice, caught up in the bliss of Emma's survival. Bunnymund would be confounded if he could hear them now. "It's good."

"Yeah? I guess you're right. Great, really! Quick and painless. Kind of like going to sleep. Only with more, uh, fire." Hiccup babbles to a stop and does something of a comical double-take, straightening up in the process. It looks funny with his helmet and buckles all strapped on like dragon spines, almost as if his hackles are visibly rising. "Wait...three hundred years?" he backtracks, strained.

"What, too old?"

"You're _young!_ "

" _I'm_ young?" Jack laughs, thinking of his youthful believers with their round, innocent smiles and missing teeth. " _Me?_ "

"Well that's, come on now, that's not fair, you don't age when you...when your body...you don't _physically_ age. I'll have you know I'm very mature, we Viking boys -- uh, Viking men -- are all about intellectual progress--"

"Uh huh."

"Like a village elder - I'm basically an elder, you know, I'm sage material--"

"Whatever you say, old man."

Hiccup shudders at that. It starts around shoulders and twitches up into his ears like a shock of winter air. "Never mind." he decides as Jack cackles, hugging his knees. "Forget I said that. It seems especially wrong coming from you. Not that you're wrong, it's...maybe it's the white hair, but it's.."

"White hair doesn't make me look old," Jack teases, giving the silver locks a shake for emphasis. It tosses just enough in the helpful wind to lay pleasingly across his forehead in pale shards. "It makes me look _charming._ "

"About as charming as a Gronkle." Hiccup snorts. Jack has no idea what a Gronkle is, but he's a pro at teasing, has been for decades, and right now he can tell, Hiccup is _teasing_. He doesn't know why, but it makes his stomach flip.

"It's my face, isn't it?" Jack says, tipping his head back and letting a boyish smile slide across it. "I'm told it's very handsome. Ice rot is hard to resist, I know." Hiccup snorts again, the same scandalized amusement Jack was struggling with just moments before. "But Tooth says my teeth are _terrific._ "

"Oh, yeah." comes Hiccup's voice, totally unimpressed. "Very...white." 

"Like freshly fallen snow."

"Well forgive me for not falling over in awe or anything, but you're in tough competition. Toothless has a winning smile. Don't you, bud?"

"Let's see yours, then." Jack tries, and Hiccup's hand stills on Toothless's head too suddenly to be coincidence.

"Yeah," he says, "That's...uh. That's an idea."

The air seems colder, in no way at all like Jack's gift but sharper, stranger, as if the shift in his tone had sucked all their remaining air out of their surroundings. The odd flip in Jack's stomach settles suddenly and now just feels heavy, too heavy. He's staring at the tiny bit of Hiccup's face he can see - the eyes, not the fake ones painted on his forehead but the startled little circles of green peeking out from the slits of his helmet -- his real eyes. It can't be tribal paint that makes the left one look so red.

"I just, aha..I'll just think it over. " Hiccup carefully gets to his feet, gingerly testing balance on his false leg. "Sleep on it. Sleep sounds great right about now, actually, don't you think? Getting late. Things to do. So I'll just, I'll be getting a move on, actually, if that's okay."

Hiccup swipes his thumb over his hip again, triple-checking that the skull charm is still safely tucked away.

"Okay." Jack thinks he hears himself say.

"Thanks for the," mutters Hiccup, gesturing uselessly with both hands. "The....yeah."

"Yeah." Jack echoes. "Thanks for-"

"Thanks." Hiccup concludes. He gets to his feet, boot first, prosthetic to follow. Jack watches with something like awe as he takes a limping step to Toothless, slides on his back in the blink of an eye, a rush of the wind, then just like that -- nothing.

_Nothing._

He's _gone._

Jack's fingers clasp and unclasp uselessly at the space where just seconds ago, he used to be.

 _I messed up_ , he thinks, sitting there, frozen. He's had fights with Bunnymund that had never ended so quickly. There's no blue sky to be salvaged from this place, no distant horizon to watch dragon wings disappear over. Just wind and fog. 

He wouldn't have to go far to be shrouded in the mist. Maybe Hiccup was still around, hanging by for curiosity's sake or something, but somehow Jack doubts it.

Wine-red skin. A mask. 

Jack looks at his cracked, gray hands and thinks of the inside of his lake, of Pitch's lair, the Nightmare King's gleefully sadistic voice whispering _what might they think if they glimpse your face, a nightmare child like you are?_

"Hey!" Jack calls out suddenly, hoping to his feet. "Come back!" A thousand ghosts of his voice bounce back at him, hollowed out, taunting. 

A directionless flight and scour of the nearby terrain does nothing to shake the noise. 

"Dragon boy!" he calls, as if they're only playing hide and seek. And of course it's Jack seeking - it's always been that way, hasn't it? "Hiccup...?"

He waits for another hour, conjuring snowflakes and sketching Toothless in frost ferns across the desolate rock, helplessly hopeful. Hiccup doesn't come back.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A late chapter, apologies.

For the next few months, Jack can't tell if he's being closely followed, obsessively _avoided_ , or both.

He understands from his own experience the way a spirit moves when it's used to being unseen - the careless, almost fanciful manner of fitting himself into negative spaces as if to fill the gaps left between living things. He knows how the tangible surface of the earth becomes a canvas, the open stretch of sky a blanket, telephone wires and picket fences a jungle gym to balance on and tiptoe along while he pretend he has footprints.

But Hiccup doesn't move quite the same way Jack does. It must be the dragon at his side to help him, because he's just as sneaky as Pitch Black himself. He slides out of view like a shadow, one moment a peek of red in the corner of Jack's eye, the next just a flash of inky wings and a vacant space with only wind to fill. The duo have crept so close, so stealthily, that Jack only had time to double-take before the had melted away again. 

There's several explanations as to how they could become to still, and the lack of a heartbeat is only one of them. Jack's seen spirits who could fade at will, wisps who could blend in like chameleons or become as perfectly motionless as an animal at a hunt. But he knows, somehow, that Hiccup is like him. Isn't breathing like him. 

He thinks, maybe, that's why he keeps coming back.

It's with Toothiana that the subject comes up the most. And it's not just because Jack knows that she's a common friend, or even that he's considered the possibility that Hiccup may overhear their little conversations, if he talks loudly enough. It's the curiosity in her jewel-bright eyes when he tries to mimic Toothless's jet-sleek flight pattern mid-snowball fight, docking and dodging and bumping into shrieking fairies between sparkling flurries of frost. It's the way that she approaches him with motherly radiance when he collapses afterward, cackling and panting. When Jack has one leg hanging off the cusp of a golden tower, staring off into the distance and unfocusing his eyes as he's gotten into the habit of doing while searching for those two glowing circles of paint that decorate the top of Hiccup's helmet.

"You returned it," she reminds him thankfully, fitting a comforting hand to his wrist. "I'm sure that means more to him than anything else. There isn't a better feeling in the world than finding something precious again when you thought it was lost."

She's right. Jack knows she's right. Toothiana would know that better than anyone.

"Besides, I think he really is happy in his nest." she adds, the feathers of her brilliant crest perking up hopefully at the thought. According to her, it's an important crutch to have when your life is so reliant on wings. Maybe it even has something to do with their friendship, the dragon-boy and the fairy. He can't help but wonder, looking at the flickering shapes upon her back, if they've sympathized about the difficulties of taking to the sky, maybe even shared the same phobias about nets and cages. He thinks he could relate, being a child of flight himself, but Toothiana's so much more established in her other-worldliness than he is. She was born the way she was, after all, while Jack was born a human. And Hiccup - well, he doesn't even have a face for the name, does he? Maybe there are scales under that helmet. How could he know?

"Unless you tell me...," he's pestered Toothiana time and time again, but by the way she shifts and looks up at him, he thinks it's likely that she doesn't know either. The reply every time is apologetic and a little tired; "It's not my story to tell."

He leaves Punjam Hy Loo to wander over the forest treetops, a canopy that Toothiana fondly calls home. Hiccup is there again, a maybe-shadow in the distance, and Jack finds himself playing casual, counting the seconds until he dares to turn his head. He knows that if he does, Hiccup will flee. Try as he might, he can't think of a method to _not_ frighten him away.

Calling out doesn't work, or waving, or sneaking in. He tried to chase him once, but Hiccup didn't show up again for another three months after _that._

He's only a little surprised. Jack's always been very good at that after all: the art of being repulsive. 

\----

When Jamie turns twenty three, he and his girlfriend pool their money together for a week-long trip together in the Bennett's old hand-me-down station-wagon. Jack hears bits and pieces from his excited ramblings - hotels booked, a concert they've been dying to see. Mostly, it's all long-winded descriptions about Samantha's new pixie cut and her subtle sense of humor. Jack has to bite his knuckles to keep himself from interrupting to ask more about mosh pits and glow sticks, which are more relevant to his own interests but clearly far less important to Jamie than the anticipation of pouring over a road-map with his dream girl.

They kiss in the doorway before hurrying off, their faces in a rosy flush, and Sophie, sixteen and in a fit of giggles, pretends to gag on her pink lemonade after they've turned their backs. She's always been Bunnymund's favorite (as well as a topic of common ground for the Guardians when snowballs and eggs begin to take a repetitive note), and despite not having returned to the Warren her presence as a whole has carried through with an consistent theme of pastel pinks and glitter.

The day after Jamie's trip kicks off she tears through his room with a spiral sketchbook propped on her elbow, checking off squares and bookmarking page after page in his old (and increasingly neglected) paranormal books. Jack watches with a helpless, dreamy kind of pride as she spends the next few hours sketching out the shapes of Bigfoot, Dracula, and every winged creature she can find a reference for.

Many of them take a likeness to Toothiana, which is touching although not particularly surprising. She's faithful enough to still be able to see the tooth fairy, but it's all a matter of catching her now - even the Guardians have trouble getting a peek of Toothiana on her busy days. But Sophie's a wiz with her chalks and colored pencils, pulling brilliant lines of emerald green and gold across page after page, patiently allowing Jack to sort though them and share snippets of old stories as he sees fit.

"Jamie's just being dumb...," she complains, clicking her tongue as she squints down at her unfolding linework. "He says he'll give me his whole paranormal collection when I turn eighteen, everything 'cept the hard evidence, but he keeps on changing the age and we all know it's because he wants to keep it! He doesn't even read them anymore, Jack." she continues in a higher pitch. "He spends all his time with Sam. She doesn't even _like_ Bigfoot..."

"She likes Jamie." Jack smiles, tracing a thumb fondly over her pen-and-ink rendition of the Fairy Queen. "Jamie's got big feet, right?"

"Oh my God, he's a troll!" Sophie glances back at him and smiles brilliantly through her giggling. "...have you ever seen a fairy circle, Jack? Do they exist? I read that if you get caught in one, you got wrapped up in their dancing for so long you don't even realize you're old 'till you're _old_!"

"Can't say I have."

"How about a harpy? Or a dragon?"

Jack things of Hiccup, perched motionless and cocking his head like a bird, and grins crookedly. "They're kind of shy, the dragons..."

"But they're real?"

"Sure are. Just don't stay up dragon-watching, Soph, you'll never sleep!" Sophie pouts, leaning back in her chair, and Jack catches a glimpse of bat-like wings over her shoulder, slender, asian-styled dragons that look nothing at all like the sleek, panther-like creature he remembers staring back at him through the fog. "Look." she says, tapping a finger at bottom of his sketchbook stack. "That's for you."

Jack's breath catches in his throat as he flips to the end.

He's not sure what he expected - more fairies, maybe, more feathery wings and flight feathers. But her final drawing isn't _for_ him - it _is_ him. She's sketched him lean and silly, a cartoon caricature shaded in gray with big, blue eyes like coins. His ears and nose and the shape of his mouth are all cute, stylized little blots of black, as if he's wearing punk makeup instead of displaying stages of post-mortem rot. She's even drawn in the cracks in his skin, only in her rendition the webs of frost are like stars, spiky and sweet.

"That's _me!_ " he laughs out, and his voice sounds a little too high to be natural. "You _drew_ me, kiddo?"

"I draw you a lot! You like to stay still! And you're really cool looking."

Jack's smile is starting to hurt. "That's, wow...Soph, you're good!" He hovers fingers over his penciled-in face, made approachable by her hands, almost as if touching it directly would stain the sketchbook paper. "You did me a favor there-"

"A favor?"

"Well," he rubs the back of his neck, chortling. "You made me look pretty!"

Sophie rolls her eyes. "You _are_ pretty."

"I'm no fairy princess," he teases, giving her shoulder a gentle poke for emphasis. She grins back at him, smoothing a hand over her lacy pink sweater in acknowledgement. "Well, no," she admits, "But you're pretty, okay?" She flips back to her drawing, leaving Jack to fix his eyes back on her sketch, drinking in every detail.

"You can keep it." she offers over her shoulder.

Jack remembers his frozen lake, the endless stretch of sky, and thinks, _\--where?_

"And also," Sophie adds when Jack takes too long to answer. "You should play with Jamie more, too. He needs a break now and then, 'specially since he's going grown-up on us now. He really likes to see you."

_Nobody likes to see me._ The thought comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that it's almost as if it's someone else's words being whispered into his ear. It's not true, really - he knows it's not, even if it's just the Guardians that prove him wrong, or just the Bennetts . 

He almost voices it - almost _wants_ to, to have that rare human moment as he's blinking stupidly back at Sophie's ever-aging eyes. But even in his head it sounds too much like something Pitch would say, so he doesn't.

\----

A week passes, then two. Jack keeps the picture, like a rare and precious treasure, clutching it tight so the wind won't rip it away but with a painstaking gentleness so as to not dent the paper. He hides it in North's office for the simple sake of not having anywhere safer to put it - and also because, if North catches sight of it, Jack thinks he'd understand.

It puts him in a habit. Now when he visits, he checks underneath the old Russian doll, making sure it hasn't disappeared inexplicably while he was away.

He's starting to understand that skull-charm a little better, even if he still doesn't know a thing about it. But he guesses, from the memory of Hiccup triple-checking his hip pocket, smoothing a thumb over that tiny shape for consolation, that maybe it was a gift from a friend.

\-----

There is no more talk of Fearlings for some time. Jack doesn't have a reason to look for darkness. But every few winters, he returns to Antarctica, thinking maybe the statue he and Pitch had created there might have miraculously melted.

It's not like Sophie's picture, where he's afraid that one day it'll vanish or age - just like Jamie, or Emma, become another thing to go through morning process for. And it's not like the baby teeth, where he wanted to dig deeper, explore every atom of what he could get his hands on. There's memory in their blackice, but it's not precious exactly. It's just a reminder.

He wishes it wasn't such a beautiful thing. Or at least that it wasn't so reflective. He can see his face in detail over the shining surface, can almost picture Pitch looming eagerly behind him. In Antarctica, the frost on his cheeks doesn't look like Sophie's penciled stars, it looks like death.

He doesn't have a reason to return here. But here he is...and of course, by extension, here is Hiccup, perched startlingly close on the opposite clifftop. It's almost laughable how visible he is - with all that snow peppering the air, blanketing the terrain and the sky until it all seems to blend together, a washed out canvas of pale white - and there is Toothless, an ink stain of black, his tail fin like a splatter of blood on pristine parchment.

Jack's just close enough to see Hiccup's eyes - the fake ones, of course. It feels revealing, somehow, to be in front of this shameful, elegant creation of his past. It feels vulnerable. And fittingly, so does Hiccup, stark and out of place in another element. If he ran in this barren location, Jack could track him easily. But he won't...he doesn't even want to. It's so sad, when Hiccup runs from him, and he imagines it would be even sadder if he were easier to catch.

Instead he calls out, "What do you _want?_ " 

There's a bite to his voice he hadn't intended on using.

Toothless shifts, wings flickering for balance. He tosses his head at Hiccup, waiting, and the boy on the dragon actually looks around - as if there could possibly be someone else Jack was talking to in this wasteland.

But he doesn't run.

"...what do _you_ want?" Hiccup shouts back. His voice seems to small for him. It's probably the storm, Jack thinks.

He racks his brains. He wants a lot of things, really, but none of them are desperate, nothing he couldn't live without. But...

There's one thing he wants most--

"...I want to _race_ you." Jacks blurts out suddenly, and he's pleased to hear the bite is gone this time. He sounds hopeful now. Boyish. Charming, even. Hiccup's shoulders slump, a subtle enough movement, but clear as day through the high contrast, even with his over-sized cloak keeping his shape blurry and vague.

"You...?"

"Can I?"

"You're _serious?_ "

"I'll let you win, okay?"

"That's - wait, _what?_ You can't beat _me_ , I have Toothless!"

"Fine, then." Jack grins, resisting the urge to check his reflection as the mirror in his peripheral vision does the same. "I'll let you _lose._ "

He can almost see Hiccup's jaw drop in prideful disbelief from underneath the helmet. 

His heart picks up at the thought. Now _this_ he can do. This is natural to him. He _does_ want this, too, really wants it--

"For Thors sake..." Hiccup rasps, slapping a hand to his temple with a metallic clack. "I-"

He has him. He _has_ him. Jack's a professional when it comes to fun, he can tell when he's winning - this is his center, after all. Cackling, he hops on the wind, tightens his grip on the staff, and takes off for the skyline like a bullet before Hiccup can talk himself out of it.

He's barely two seconds into flight, whooping with delight, when he hears the scream of dragon wings speeding after him.


End file.
